Friday, August 27, 2010

I am currently in Guatemala, and amongst the wonderful culture and language shock and the ambient mountains and abundance of natural growing things and the obvious self sufficiency of this place, all I can think about is Art art art, what im going to create when I get back... how i cant wait to try this or that, and all the sketches and wiritings i have done while here. I just hope the art materializes once in the states, my mood here is easy, there is no negative stress, I sleep a lot, and everything is new and different. I have visited museums and taken pictures of modern as well as ancient art and have lots of ideas for projects dealing with figures and not dealing with figures. Many of my ideas have little to do with the colors or ruins of this country, it simply allowed me the calirty to allow the ideas to come through.

Tuesday, August 3, 2010

Pedro Ramirez, the self-proclaimed “King of Kitsch” has crafted a business out of his polymer clay hobby. Creating figures with bright skirts and flowing manes, sealing them in plastic boxes, and selling them on the streets, the internet, the NYC subway system, and wherever else he can. Ramirez embraces the title due to his recent educational experience in the Public University CUNY system. While attending and even upon graduation, he claims that his advisors and professors would often try and convince him to alter his work to be more scholarly, to get out of craft, and into galleries where the big bucks were. He claims those around him were trying to mold him into the next big thing in ceramics, but things didn’t turn out that way, Ramirez took his own path and he says he regrets nothing. A closer inspection upon these exquisite little figurines reveals something more, kitsch? I think not. According to the Merriam Webster Dictionary, Kitsch is something that appeals to popular or lowbrow taste and is often of poor quality. I would argue that Ramirez’ work is 50/50 Kitsch if at all. The figures are brilliant, his own personal style of intentional body manipulation with an attention to detail which can be appreciated; of low quality? Definitely not, of popular appeal… perhaps. Dozens of onlookers can be seen at his table at all times of the day, making it hard to take bathroom breaks. He muses over each and every one, and if someone tries to get a lower price? Ramirez tells them that he is happy to keep each and every figure no matter what, he doesn’t sell his girls off cheap! Stay tuned this original and inspiring Kitsch King is well on his way to getting the notoriety he deserves.